Stranger Than
by schwarmereione
Summary: Kalinda found out that the rumours were true from the touch of a hand late one night in the office.


**Title:** Stranger Than  
><strong>Author:<strong> schwarmerei1  
><strong>Rating:<strong> M  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> The Good Wife  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Alicia Florrick, Kalinda Sharma, Diane Lockhart  
><strong>Pairing: <strong>Alicia/Kalinda  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I mean no disrespect, CBS, Scott Free, and the Kings own them  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> Spoilers through episode 5x22 "A Weird Year"  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Written for **sweetjamielee**'s "Everything Changes" 2014 "The Good Wife" Ficathon  
>Thank you <strong>hotladykisses<strong> for giving this a lookover.

**Prompt:** Alicia/Kalinda - Kalinda has always found it easier to fuck strangers, so in a way it's better now that Alicia has become one.

Kalinda found out that the rumours were true from the touch of a hand late one night in the office.

Alicia's hand.

At face value, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Just a palm resting on the small of her back as she poured herself a glass of milk at the Florrick, Agos & Lockhart refrigerator. But she knew straight away it was not "I'm just squeezing past you - don't jump and spill your drink."

They used to touch each other . . . casual . . . friendly. But that was _before_. Now Kalinda worked for Diane and just Diane. When Alicia needed Kalinda, she used Robyn instead.

They were colleagues in name - strangers in practice.

Alicia's hand didn't move for a whole five seconds, then just the merest stroke of her thumb across Kalinda's spine confirmed that the Florricks did indeed have a political marriage.

Kalinda was good at this sort of thing. Better than good. She knew when a touch or a look said "Let's fuck." She spared strangers the necessity of having to say it aloud. She knew how to do the other stuff too. Like how to take a woman in the stall of a ladies' room. How to tell if she wanted to be fucked, or if she wanted to come. Or in Alicia's case: both.

By contrast, Alicia was obviously new to this. It was okay to use your mouth, but you really weren't supposed to kiss. And definitely not kiss, and kiss, then kiss some more. Still, Kalinda managed to be the one to pull away, exit the stall to wash her hand, and leave Alicia to rearrange her clothes.

She managed to walk away the first time.

Strangers wanting a second time was something else Kalinda was good at. If the sex had been good, why not go back for another taste, and another . . . until either the flavour on her tongue became bland, or the person wanted to stop being a stranger? That was another look Kalinda knew how to translate with accuracy.

Alicia was a little too used to getting her own way, so Kalinda didn't give her what she wanted. She kept Diane engaged in conversation as the rest of the staff filtered out one by one. Alicia needed a lot more practice, decided Kalinda - she was looking over at Kalinda's desk far too often.

It was satisfying to watch Alicia's eyes across the office as Diane finally slung her handbag and strode toward the freight elevator. But instead of waiting until they were the last two people there like she was supposed to, Kalinda folded her laptop and followed Diane. Diane told Alicia "Good night." Kalinda just held her eyes as the mesh screen slammed shut between them. In fact, she might have faked a smirk.

Kalinda relented the next night. Alicia was the sixth person to be inside Kalinda's apartment since she'd gotten the keys: the two removalists, Bill, then Nick, and the guy who patched her drywall. And now Alicia.

She was good at that too. Knowing when a stranger was going to need more than could be provided in a darkened passageway, behind a door, or inside a toilet stall. Having been denied the night before, Alicia was beyond what could be done in the offices of Florrick, Agos & Lockhart after hours. Ordinarily, that would mean a hotel room, but that wouldn't work for the First Lady of Illinois, even if Alicia had gotten away with it for months with Will in the past. Second choice would be the stranger's apartment, but Alicia had a teenage daughter.

So instead they were here - Alicia so pale she made Kalinda's sheets look less than white. And Alicia needed it. Needed it so bad that Kalinda knew to pause only long enough to nuzzle Alicia's thighs before lowering her head again and coaxing Alicia to a second climax. And even a third that Kalinda knew was fluttering close by, but would have eluded the grasp of someone less skilled than she was.

Alicia was failing as a stranger though. A stranger wouldn't have known Kalinda's name to call out repeatedly between the swear words. Curses that Kalinda suspected wouldn't have been part of Alicia's vocabulary during sex just a few years ago. Kalinda tried to summon indifference to scour Alicia's voice from her memory.

When Alicia swung one leg over Kalinda's head and rolled away, Kalinda's expectation that their encounter was at a close was proven wrong. As usual, Alicia was the only person who could surprise her.

It was probably nothing more than the fact that however proficient one's own hands became at self-satisfaction, sometimes one wanted tenderness, and that required a partner. Even if a stranger.

Warily, Kalinda ran one hand up and down Alicia's spine, and watched as Alicia stayed. Gentle caresses preserved that pleasured drowsiness in Alicia to the point where Kalinda saw the slight relaxation of the tension in the other woman's vertebrae and knew she had fallen asleep. Kalinda pulled up the covers she'd dragged off the bed earlier, and watched.

Here at least Alicia did meet expectations, her sleep was brief before she gave a small jerk awake. And still she made no move to leave. Nor did she roll over to touch Kalinda.

There had to be a reason why Alicia hadn't risen from the bed to collect her clothes. Kalinda pushed at Alicia's upper leg until her bent knee was drawn up. She knew she had guessed correctly when Alicia tilted her pelvis against probing fingers to offer Kalinda a better angle.

Alicia met each additional finger and the increasing force of Kalinda's thrusts with acquiescence, until "fucking" was again the appropriate word to describe what they were doing. Kalinda panted into the space between Alicia's shoulder blades and listened as Alicia's breaths became ragged and turned into sobs.

They weren't strangers. If they were, Kalinda would have had to stop. Ask if her partner was okay. Find out if she needed to apologise. But she knew Alicia, and she knew from her own experience what Alicia was doing: trying to fuck something loose - something destructive that had embedded small vicious hooks inside Alicia, tearing at her until everything tasted like blood.

Kalinda knew. Knew not to touch Alicia's clit because an orgasm was not what this fuck was about. Knew when to stop and just let Alicia turn her face into the pillows and cry.

Kalinda would have had to ask a stranger if she wanted to talk about it. But instead, she laminated her body along the planes of Alicia's back, and tried not to wish that it was her skin against Alicia's, rather than just the cups of her bra and the nylon of her stockings. Because undressing Kalinda wasn't part of what they were doing. The only reason her skirt, blouse, belt, and boots were on the floor intertwined with Alicia's clothes was because she'd taken them off herself.

When Alicia finally shifted and sat up, Kalinda rose too and moved to her bathroom. By the time Alicia had extracted her clothes from the pile they shared with Kalinda's, wipes, makeup remover, and everything else necessary for Alicia to repair her face was laid out on the vanity. Kalinda retreated to the kitchen.

She watched Alicia walk out the door. They didn't meet each other's eyes, let alone speak. There was no way to be strangers anymore.

If they had been strangers, the pillowslip that bore the imprint of Alicia's tears and makeup would have spent the night soaking in the basin with some stain remover - not clutched against Kalinda's body as she slept fitfully.

Alicia stepped off the elevator and turned silently toward her office. Kalinda's stomach dropped as though she had fallen over the rise of a roller-coaster - she ought to have called in sick. For whole minutes she stared at her computer screen unseeing.

The mental effort required to maintain focus on her work was exhausting. She stayed at her desk through lunch when Alicia left the office. It was an hour's relief, and an hour less she'd need to stay tonight to chip away at Diane's mountains of paper. Clearly, staying after hours was too dangerous to contemplate.

The freight elevator announced visitors long before they arrived, and it was an automatic response to raise her head when the doors screeched open. Typically, she would return her attention to her work. This time she checked, disconcerted to see Grace Florrick.

There was nothing untoward about Alicia's children dropping by the office for some reason or other, but the sight of Grace hit her like a physical blow. The last time she'd seen Alicia Florrick's daughter had been that day nearly two years ago when (unknown) she'd returned an errant Grace to her distraught mother.

She watched Grace cross the floor. There was very little left of the girl she had driven home that day in the almost-woman who was here today.

It was a second blow - the Grace she had known didn't exist anymore, and she hadn't realised that fact until this instant, because she wasn't part of Alicia's life anymore.

Her too-intense scrutiny drew Grace's attention, and Kalinda found herself the unexpected recipient of a beaming smile as Grace held her gaze.

Kalinda returned it as best she could, thankful that at least the stinging of her eyes wouldn't be visible given the distance between them.

She turned away to look at Diane through the glass partition that divided their spaces. Diane reminded her why she had made this decision to gravitate back into Alicia's orbit and thereby unearth all the futile emotions Alicia Florrick pulled from within her. She spent several long moments watching Diane in her glasses concentrate on the piece of paper in front of her, hoping that Grace wouldn't actually come over to say hello.

When she risked looking around, Grace was waiting for the elevator with her back to Kalinda - clearly she was safe from a visit. Because her life was about inviting trouble, her eyes tracked further around the office to Alicia and discovered that the lawyer was gazing thoughtfully at her daughter, expression inscrutable. Then of course, Alicia looked at her.

Kalinda hastily turned back to her computer screen. Some days it felt like Alicia Florrick had made a coward of her.

It certainly felt like cowardice as afternoon turned to evening and Kalinda followed the example of the secretaries and paralegals and began to shut up shop for the day instead of working into the night as she usually did.

She wasn't quick enough. There were still plenty of lawyers in the office, but her desk was sufficiently isolated that Alicia felt secure enough to ambush her.

"Kalinda . . ."

Just the sound of her name on Alicia's lips was enough to bring last night rushing back. Her body responded involuntarily with a feeling of heaviness between her thighs. The idea that Alicia now ruled her physical responses as well as her emotional ones was unbearable. The resulting clamour in her brain made it impossible at first to hear what Alicia was saying and realise that this was a very different conversation to the one she was dreading.

". . . to talk. What we've been doing . . . it needs to stop."

Kalinda nodded mutely. Yes, it definitely needed to stop. She wrongly assumed Alicia was finished.

"I want things to be different." Alicia looked around surreptitiously. "Grace is away tonight on a field trip."

Kalinda didn't trust that she understood.

"Please."

Kalinda didn't dare blink, didn't even breathe.

"Come home with me."

She looked at Alicia, really looked at her. Alicia looked back. It was the first time in years that they both saw each other.

"Home . . ." Thought Kalinda as she turned her face to rest against Alicia's neck. "Home . . ." As Alicia's fingers combed gently through Kalinda's hair. "Home." As sleep finally claimed them both.


End file.
